Heeling power

By Natasha Sarkisian

After trekking to seven shoe-repair shops on an undercover hunt for the region’s finest cobblers—all in service of our annual “Best of the Bay Area” feature—I’d almost given up, doomed to never find my Geppetto. Then I arrived at Tony’s in Mill Valley.

From inside the two-story cottage, I heard owner Mijak Pirinjian instructing a legion of third graders on “how to make a shoe.” His fascinating and convincing speech was persuasion enough for me: Just as I had at the other promising places I’d found, I left a pair of my shoes to see how well he could fix them. The victims were worn-down, pink-and-brown Enzo heels that I hadn’t been able to wear for more than a year.

Fast-forward a couple of days. I hadn’t yet returned to Tony’s for my shoes, but we needed a cobbler to shoot for this issue, and Pirinjian was my best candidate. (I just hoped he wouldn’t fail the Enzo test, or we couldn’t use the picture.) When the photographer, Alex Fradkin, sent in the shots and flagged this close-up of Pirinjian at work as his favorite, I gasped. There, in bold detail, was proof of Pirinjian’s prowess with a pair of pumps. And they weren’t just any pumps—out of more than 3,000 pairs piled in his shop, he’d reached for mine.

Two weeks later, I picked up the shoes that I’d once left for dead in my closet—and there they were, restored to their pre–Nob Hill climbing, 16th Street stomping, three-martini lunching glory. Two 24-grit sanding belts were used to wear my heels down to a smooth surface. Then Pirinjian inserted a new nail and glued on a replacement heel plate.

I bet Pinocchio never looked this good in pink.